April 18^th is

Adult Autism Day *

Animal Crackers Day

World Amateur Radio Day *

National Columnists’ Day *

World Heritage Day *

Lineman Appreciation Day *

Piñata Day *
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MORE! Clarence Darrow, Jessie Street and “Gatemouth” Brown, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Australia – Tasmania: Easter Tuesday

Cyprus – Orthodox Easter Tuesday

Lebanon – Qana Memorial Day
(bombing of UN Qana compound) *

Myanmar – New Year celebration

Nauru – Easter Tuesday

New Zealand – Southland:
Provincial Anniversary Date

Zimbabwe – Independence Day
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On This Day in HISTORY

1506 – The cornerstone of the current St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City is laid

1521 – Day two of Martin Luther’s trial at the Diet of Worms; he refuses to recant his teachings in spite of risking excommunication

1580 – Thomas Middleton born, English Jacobean playwright and poet

1689 – When news that James II of England had been deposed reaches Boston MA,they revolt against Governor General of New England Sir Edmund Andros, who had alienated Puritans by insisting on Anglican services being held in one of their churches for a year during the building of King’s Chapel; angered farmers by reinstating revenue laws they felt unfairly targeted them, and increased the import duty on alcohol. Officials of towns which resisted the revenue commissioners were arrested; Andros then sought to ban town meetings, other than a single annual meeting solely for the purpose of electing officials – instead of shutting down protest, it increased resistance, especially among those excluded by a charter requirement of Anglican church membership in order to vote, even though they were just as liable for paying taxes. He declared all land titles in Massachusetts issued under the original colonial charter as void, requiring landowners to pay fees and additional taxes to recertify their ownership – though he was acting on authority given him by the British government, with instructions to bring colonial law into alignment with British law, he was seen as acting against British traditions established under the Magna Carta After holding him prisoner for months, the colonials put him on a ship bound to England

1775 – Paul Revere begins his ride from Charlestown to Lexington MA, warning American colonists that the British are coming

1813 – James McCune Smith born, American physician, apothecary, abolitionist who worked with Frederick Douglass, and author; first African American to hold a medical degree; graduated at the top in his class from the University of Glasgow; first African American to run a pharmacy in the U.S.; a practicing doctor for 20 years at New York’s Colored Orphan Asylum, elected as a member of the New York Statistics Society and the American Geographic Society,  but never admitted to the American Medical Association or local medical associations

1831 – The University of Alabama opens in Tuscaloosa, Alabama; eleven years after the General Assembly of Alabama authorized a “seminary of learning” and appointed a Board of Trustees

1857 – Clarence Darrow born, American defense lawyer and leading ACLU member

1858 – Dr. Dhondo Keshav Karve born, Indian social reformer and advocate for women’s education and uplifting the status of widows; awarded India’s highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna, in 1958

1874 – Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić born, Croatian author; Croatian Tales of Long Ago 

1881 – Max Weber born in Poland, American Cubist painter and poet

1882 – The St. Andrews Ambulance Association is formed, Scotland’s first and only ambulance service until the reorganization of the National Health Service in 1974

1882 – Leopold Stokowski born, English conductor, long-time music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra

1889 – Jessie Street born, Australian feminist and human rights activist, initiator of the “Aboriginal” amendment of the Australian Constitution; The Jessie Street National Women’s Library is a unique specialist library dedicated to the preservation of Australian women’s work, words and history, established in 1989, it is named for the lifelong campaigner for women’s rights, the peace movement and the elimination of discrimination against Aboriginal people

1901 – Al Lewis born, American songwriter; “Blueberry Hill”

1906 – “Little Brother” Montgomery born, American jazz/boogie-woogie pianist-singer

1906 – The San Francisco earthquake hits at 5:12 a.m., collapsing buildings and starting fires which destroy most of the city; over 3,000 people are killed

1907 – Miklós Rózsa born in Austria-Hungary, American composer and conductor

1909 – Joan d’Arc is beatified by Pope Pius X at Notre Dame de Paris

1912 – The Cunard liner RMS Carpathia arrives in New York harbor, carrying 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic

1905 – Baroness von Suttner becomes the first woman to receive a Nobel Peace Prize and the second woman to receive a Nobel Prize

1915 – Joy Davidman born, American author and poet; Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments; her marriage to C.S. Lewis inspired the play and film Shadowlands

1924 – Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown born, American blues and fusion musician; Grammy winner in 1983 for Best Traditional Blues Album

1925 – The International Amateur Radio Union is founded in Paris, IARU is the sponsor of World Amateur Radio Day *

1939 – Gene Autry records “Back in the Saddle Again”

1942 – In the WWII Doolittle Raid on Japan, Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe and Nagoya are bombed, the first U.S. air strike directly on Japan

1942 – Pierre Laval becomes Prime Minister of the Vichy government of France; after WWII he is tried and executed for treason

1945 – Ernie Pyle, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and war correspondent, is killed by WWII Japanese sniper fire on Okinawa – National Columnists’ Day * is founded in his honor on the date of his death by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, which organized in 1977

1946 – International Court of Justice holds its first meeting in The Hague, Netherlands

1949 – The Irish Republic is proclaimed

1954 – Gamal Abdel Nasser seizes power in Egypt

1955 – Twenty-nine nations meet at Bandung, Indonesia, first Asian-African Conference

1965 – American contralto Marian Anderson ends her 54-city farewell tour with a concert at Carnegie Hall – her first tour stop had been Constitution Hall, where the Daughters of the American Revolution had refused to allow her to sing in 1939 because of her race – she gave a concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial instead

1978 – The U.S. Senate approves the Panama Canal Treaty, providing for the complete turnover of control of the waterway to Panama on the last day of 1999

1980 – Rhodesia becomes the Republic of Zimbabwe

1982 – World Heritage Day * is launched at the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) symposium in Tunisia, and approved by UNESCO since 1983

1983 – A suicide bomber in Lebanon destroys the U. S. embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people, after the U.S. and other Western nations intervene in the Lebanese Civil War. Secretary of State George P. Schultz is not called before Congress to defend himself against any charges of culpability or wrongdoing

1988 – The U.S. Navy launches Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian naval forces in the largest naval battle since World War II

1989 – Thousands of Chinese students take to the streets in Beijing to protest government policies, calling for greater democracy in the People’s Republic of China

1992 – General Abdul Rashid Dostum revolts against Democratic Republic of Afghanistan President Mohammad Najibullah, becoming allies with Ahmad Shah Massoud to capture Kabul

1996 – In Lebanon, at least 106 civilians are killed when the Israel Defense Forces shell the UN compound at Quana where more than 800 civilians had taken refuge.

2007 – U.S. Supreme Court rules 5-4 to uphold a federal ban on the so-called “partial-birth abortion” a misnomer invented by anti-abortionists; a term which has been rejected by the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

2009 – The first Adult Autism Day *

2011 – Standard & Poor’s lowers its long-term outlook for the U.S. government’s fiscal health from “stable” to “negative”

2013 – National (Electrical) Lineman Appreciation Day * is confirmed by a U.S. Senate resolution

2016 – The first Piñata Day *
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Visuals

• Piñata Day sticker
• International flags
• St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City
• Thomas Middleton, poem
• Clarence Darrow, President quote
• Chinese Restaurant, by Max Weber
• Jessie Street National Women’s Library, Australia 
• Joy Davidman, murder quote
• National Columnist Day, Ernie Pyle – banner
• World Heritage Day poster
• Adult Autism Day header
• National Lineman Appreciation Day header

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